The use of endoprostheses such as stents, stent-grafts, grafts, etc. is well known in maintaining the patency of bodily vessels and treating stenoses within arteries and other body spaces.
Stents can be constructed from tubes or sheets. Of those constructed from sheets, rolled and coiled, coiled sheet stents are known in the art. These coiled sheet stent designs have limited geometries to prevent tangling of the layers as the stent expands and un-coils. In general, the geometries of these coiled sheet stent designs are typically less flexible than the geometric stent designs available in other types of stents.
The coiled sheet stent designs typically have closed cell geometries in order to avoid tangling whereas some of the more flexible stents typically have open cell geometries. The closed cells typically have more connectors connecting adjacent portions of the coiled stent together than do the open cell geometries.
However, stent flexibility is very important in certain procedures due to the tortuous route the stent must make through the circulatory system in reaching the occlusion site. A concern with stents with “closed cell” geometries is that they will not be flexible enough to conform to the natural vessel curvature. A concern with stents with “open cell” geometries is the tangling of layers as the stent expands and uncoils at the site of the occlusion.
It would be desirable to introduce a flexible stent with “open cell” portions that do not experience tangling of the layers as the stent expands and uncoils into the occlusions area.
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Without limiting the scope of the invention a brief summary of some of the claimed embodiments of the invention is set forth below. Additional details of the summarized embodiments of the invention and/or additional embodiments of the invention may be found in the Detailed Description of the Invention below.
A brief abstract of the technical disclosure in the specification is provided as well for the purposes of complying with 37 C.F.R. 1.72.